The Grand Illusion
Humans are beings who can both think more deeply than other creatures [at least from what we now know] and feel, often intensely. While these dual capabilities provide certain advantages, they also create problems which we tend to ignore, and this willful ignorance, at which we’re also very good, often makes the problems of overthinking and overfeeling worse.
As I’ve mentioned before, all too many overthinkers believe that correct logic leads to good solutions, but that’s not necessarily true, especially if the premises or assumptions or “facts” are incomplete or incorrect, or if the logic is designed to change people’s feelings, because emotions aren’t easily swayed by logic.
On the other side, strong feelings, especially hatred, can easily turn otherwise intelligent people into stupid idiots. And when hatred is linked to a need to belong to a group, or extreme frustration, and especially to both, the results range from horrible to catastrophic. Riots are almost always the result of emotions overriding intelligence, and the results of riots benefit no one and simply reduce the resources available, and usually that means fewer resources are available to those who had too few to begin with.
This allows those with resources to point out how “stupid” the rioters were, because most riots have the greatest destruction in the areas serving the rioters and the most loss of life among the rioters, at least until the frustration and hated among the under-privileged results in a national revolution, which has happened more than a few times.
Those with resources, more often than not, are not blinded so much by hatred, but by arrogance, or by supreme self-confidence in their own righteousness and abilities, which allows them to rationalize the idea they’ve earned, all by themselves, everything that they have, and that those with less have less solely because they have less ability and less determination.
Each “side” feels the other to be unreasonable and spoiled, and those feelings exacerbate hatred.
And, unhappily, this growth of hatred and arrogance is what has led to where we now stand, which is on a course toward severe social upheaval, if not worse.
You have just described the BreXit situation in the UK.
Social upheaval isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the society is on a steady decline. Many nations seem to tend toward such a state after years of relative stability and prosperity.
You’re right though, everybody does think that they know better and have the solution. I think that the moment to fear is when a man or woman says that a system would have worked if only -they- had been in charge. This one I hear the most often from new age communists, despite the repeated failure and widespread destruction exampled by the political ideology.
When the poor perceive that they are starving, they’ll eventually decide to eat the rich. It’s not a matter if they’re actually starving, it’s the perception.
When the gap between rich and poor becomes too great, eventually the poor eat the rich.
The Gap is once again a matter of perception. I live in a country where the wealth is very evenly spread in reality and the myth of ” the rich” seems to be anyone that has more than you do, so somebody on say $120 000 per annum thinks that they are ” poor” which they aren’t, considering that so many of them also get subsidies for all sorts of things from government and about 40% of people pay the majority of the taxes, which is hardly encouraging to those who do pay when they know the many who don’t certainty aren’t ” poor”. Social Security was intended to catch those who for whatever reason slipped through the net, it was never intended to be a career choice which it has become for many. This breeds resentments in those who are continually expected to provide more and more and in turn takes away incentives to work and save when governments find yet more excuses to retrospectively tax what they specifically said they would never do. Everyone is always in favour of lower taxes provided it isn’t them who has to go without what has become ” a right ” overlooking that rights must be balanced by ” obligations ” too.